Leadership during cooperation runs in the family for tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies, new research shows.
Leadership during cooperation runs in the family for tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies, new research shows.
University of Exeter researchers studied leadership in guppies by selectively breeding for fish that differed in how likely they were to lead a scouting party to examine a predator.
They created 30 breeding pairs of the males and females most likely to lead, and another 30 of those with lowest leadership.
Three generations later they tested males and females from these lines and found that there were “pronounced differences in leadership tendency” among the two groups – with the descendants of leaders more likely to be leaders themselves.
Males bred for low leadership were found to be more aggressive and less sociable than males bred for high leadership, but no such effect was seen among females.
Read more at University of Exeter
